SJWS - Program Notes

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Program Notes

Sunday, December 9, 2007, 3:00 PM

Addison-Penzak JCC, Los Gatos
Dr. Edward C. Harris, Conductor
Featuring Camerata California

Sonata XIX (a 15)

Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1556-1612), edited and transcribed by David Smith and Glenn Smith

Gabrieli was a leading figure in Renaissance Venetian music. He succeeded his uncle Andrea Gabrieli as organist at Venice’s St. Mark's Basilica and retained this position until his own death in 1612. His work as a composer represents the height of musical achievement in Renaissance Venice. Gabrieli continued the traditional “cori spezzati” techniques developed during the sixteenth century, contrasting different groups of singers and instrumentalists and making use of the spatial effects possible in the great basilica.

Gabrieli’s Sonata XIX features three separate brass choirs, each with five instruments. Egon F.Kenton, in The Musical Quarterly, calls it “really a very serious canon of huge proportions... Each choir enters on the final chord of the section played by the preceding one. Then, after a pause, the tremendous sound of all the voices rings in a thunderous tutti.”

Selections from “The Danserye”

Tielman Susato (1510-1570), arranged by Patrick Dunnigan
With Camerata California

I.	La Morisque
II.	Bergerette
III.	Les Quatre Branles
IV.	Fagot
V.	Den Hoboecken Dans
VI.	Ronde & Salterelle
VII.	Ronde & Aliud
VIII.	Basse Danse: Mon Desir
IX.	Pavane: La Battaille

Little is known of Susato’s early years, but in 1529 he was working as a calligrapher in Antwerp Cathedral. As a trumpeter he was also listed as “a town player,” and he was in the music printing business starting in 1541. He appears then to have added a musical instrument business at his home in 1551. During his publishing career, he was responsible for 25 books of chansons, 3 books of masses and 19 books of motets. He was anxious to promote Flemish composers and eventually published four books devoted to songs by national musicians. He also composed many of his own works based on popular Flemish music of the time. His compositions are particularly strong in their rhythmic characteristics. Much of the music he collected and composed was in dance rhythm, with the idea that this was music for the common people rather than for the aristocracy.

The Royal Fireworks Music

George Frederic Handel (1685-1759), arranged by William Schaefer

1.	Overture
2.	Bouree
3.	The Peace
4.	The Rejoicing
5.	Minuet

Handel was born in Halle, Germany, in the same year Bach was born. As a young man, he became a proficient church organist. He studied law at Halle University, but his real interest was in music. He spent three years in Rome before returning to Hanover as court musician. Handel understood his marketplace. He moved from Germany to London to capitalize on the British interest in Italian opera, composing 40 operas over a 30-year period.

The Royal Fireworks Music was commissioned by the King in 1749 to celebrate the signing of the treaty that ended the War of the Austrian Secession. A celebration was planned for London’s Green Park, where elaborate fireworks were prepared and a triumphal arch was erected. However, rain intervened, the fireworks fizzled, and the scaffolding caught fire. Musically, the saving grace was that several days earlier some 12,000 people had attended a dress rehearsal in Vauxhall Gardens, where the music was wildly acclaimed.

Turkish March from "The Ruins of Athens"

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), arranged by M.L. Lake

Born in Bonn, the eldest son of a singer in the Kapelle of the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne and grandson of the Archbishop’s Kapellmeister, Beethoven later moved to Vienna, where he had some lessons from Haydn. He quickly established himself as a remarkable keyboard player and composer. By 1815, increasing deafness made public performance impossible and accentuated existing eccentricities of character, some of which were patiently tolerated by his wealthy patrons. Beethoven did much to enlarge the possibilities of music and widen the horizons of later generations of composers. He was sometimes a controversial figure, making heavy demands on listeners both by the length and by the complexity of his writing, as he explored new fields of music.

In 1811, Beethoven wrote incidental music for a play by August von Kotzebue called “The Ruins of Athens,” which included the Turkish March. Turkish marches were occasionally used by European composers of the classical era, modeled distantly on the music of Turkish military bands. Exotic percussion instruments used by the Turks in their military music are often featured, lending an authenticity to the instrumentation of Turkish music. Today’s performance features a “Jingling Johnny,” a cascade of bells that would have been carried by a soldier on horseback, jingling with the rhythm of the horse and rider. The piccolo’s penetrating tone adds to the outdoor atmosphere.

Overture for Band

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), adapted for contemporary band by Felix Greissle

Mendelssohn’s childhood training, perfect pitch and an all-encompassing memory helped him develop into a skillful musician. He was taught the piano by his mother and gave his first public recital when he was nine. By the time he was seventeen, he had composed twelve string symphonies, an opera, and the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In 1829, after three years of study at the University of Berlin, he undertook music as a career. He became a court favorite and, in 1835, had the opportunity to take over the Gevandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. In a short time, Leipzig became the musical capital of Germany. Mendelssohn was one of the first conductors to use a baton, which helped with his insistence on precision and fast rhythms.

During his family’s summer stay at a fashionable seaside resort on the shores of the Baltic Sea, Mendelssohn was impressed with the wind band that performed there and composed a work to be performed at one of the concerts. The Andante opening of the overture is developed in a style reminiscent of a chamber group with solo passages traded among the musicians. The composition soon adopts an Allegro Vivace tempo that brings the full wind band into a logically structured, rhythmically driven theme. The fluid scale passages of the woodwinds are punctuated by accents from the brass.

Second Suite for Military Band in F Major

Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

I.	March
II.	Song Without Words "I'll Love My Love"
III.	Song of the Blacksmith
IV.	TFantasia on The “Dargason”

Holst was one of England’s most prominent composers and was also a professional trombonist and a teacher of composition and organ. His music includes operas, ballets, symphonies, chamber music and songs. During the First World War, he was placed in command of all English Army Bands, organizing music among the troops under the Y.M.C.A. Army and Education program. He continued his teaching as musical director at St. Paul’s Girls’ School in the Hammersmith borough of London.

The Second Suite for Military Band was written in 1911 and is based on old English tunes. Holst’s passionate interest in folk music had begun as early as 1905, when his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams was busy collecting traditional tunes from singers in small country villages. The March at the beginning of the suite contains three folk tunes: the quick, energetic “Morris Dance,” a sea-song with a broad, sweeping melody called “Swansea Town,” and a cheerful Irish-sounding song called “Claudy Banks.” Song Without Words, a brief piece, is a setting of the folk song “I’ll Love My Love.” Holst uses the entire range of the winds in rolling arpeggios that pass from one instrument group to another. In the third movement, Song of the Blacksmith, the entire band joins the percussion in imitating the resounding strokes on the anvil. The last movement, Fantasia on the “Dargason,” combines a lilting dance tune as an ostinato with the slower tune of “Greensleeves” in a brilliantly skillful way. The work is considered one of the cornerstones of band literature.

Fanfare and Allegro

Clifton Williams (1923-1976)

I.	Fanfare
II.	Allegro

James Clifton Williams, Jr., was born in Arkansas and studied piano, mellophone and French horn in school. In 1942, he joined the Army Air Corps as a bandsman, serving as drum major and composing works at every opportunity. He attended Louisiana State University and the Eastman School of Music. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin for seventeen years. In the ten years before his death in 1976, he served as chairman of the department of theory and composition at the University of Miami, where he was influenced by, and became a close friend of, Frederick Fennell.

In 1956, Fanfare and Allegro was the first composition to win the American Bandmasters Association’s Ostwald Award for original band literature. It was the springboard to Williams’ national acclaim as the composer of serious music for concert band. The “Fanfare” begins with a dynamic brass and percussion statement. The woodwinds enter with an ostinato figure that gradually shifts pitch from high to low. There is harmonic development as a tympani roll leads into the “Allegro” movement, again introduced by the brass. A complex rhythmic interplay between the voices of the ensemble drives the movement forward to a dramatic climax.

Program notes for SJWS concerts are excerpted from the composers’ notes, Band Notes by Norm Smith, The Pepper Music Catalog and:

Foothill College Symphonic Band
en.wikipedia.org
www.naxos.com (Handel, Beethoven, Susato, Gabrieli)
mq.oxfordjournals.org (Gabrieli)
www.bostonclassicalorchestra.org (Handel)